ABSOLUTISM AND DIVINE RIGHT 45
much-abused word, utilitarian : morality owes nothing
to natural law, for it is mere convenience. But because
natural law tells us to look after ourselves and because
we can only do so by mutual arrangements for mutual
security (i.e. by law-made morality), morality comes to
be natural.
These mutual arrangements for mutual security take
the form of a social contract. Men, tired of brutish
anarchy and of the continual fear and danger of violent
death, compose a social mechanism on definitely pur-
posive lines. It is no use trusting anybody : it is no
use coming together and hoping cheerfully for concord.
A sovereign power must be created to see that the peace
is kept, and this power must be quite unchallengeable.
That is to say, he must be over and above the contract.
Thus men, in their despair of security, give up all their
rights to a sovereign lord, and demand no condition
from him except that he will maintain their security.
Provided he fulfils this fundamental postulate, he is
not only omnipotent, he can do no wrong. Whatever
he ordains must be done, and the contracting parties
or their descendants (for Hobbes agrees with Hooker
that we are bound in the social contract by our ancestors)
have no rights against him. The people, in fact, by
their counsel of despair, have destroyed their own
separate existence : they are no longer a mob, they are
a man. 'Themultitude so united in one Person is
called a Commonwealth, in Latin, Civitas. This is the
generation of that great Leviathan, or rather (to speak
more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which we owe
under the Immortall God our peace and defence/
Leviathan, then, is the sovereign State, and according
to Hobbes ' there is no power on earth which may be
matched against it \
But suppose the sovereign fails in his trust and cannot